This Goodbye
by Winter'sFangirl
Summary: There are some goodbyes you just can't face. Forty two days ago, one was necessary, but Katniss just can't bring herself to say it. One shot, slightly based on the song 'This Goodbye' by Beth Crowley


**A/N: hello! Long time, no see. I know I should be working in Arranged, but I decided to scrap the two prewritten chapters that I had, and it's stressing me out to rewrite them. (But they needed rewritten, badly. Imagine Percy and Annabeth as emotionless puppets. That's how bad they were.)**

**I needed a break, so I wrote this one-shot Hunger Games fic (I think it's a one-shot. Might change my mind) with a slightly depressing tone. (I don't normally do sad stories, but this one was begging to be written.) **

**If any of you are Mortal Instruments fans, you've probably heard of Beth Crowley. She's that amazing girl who wrote the song 'Warrior', though she has several others. One of them is called 'This Goodbye' and it's based off the Hunger Games. Go look at her music, it's pretty awesome! (Who am I kidding? She's amazing!)**

_"I can't bring myself to say goodbye. I walk with my head up saying 'I'm fine' but that's a lie. Your face will always haunt me, it's my comfort and my curse. I can't imagine any feeling could be worse than this goodbye."_

**Okay, enough rambling. I'll get back to working on Arranged soon, I promise. (Once I get out of my writer's block.) **

**-Winter'sFangirl**

Disclaimer: I don't own The Hunger Games trilogy, or any of the characters and places. Suzanne Collins and Beth Crowley are 1000x more awesome than I could ever hope to be.

It's cold.

Soft snowflakes fall from a gray sky, some melting the moment they touch the dark earth. Others cling to the dead leaves, leaving spots of white among the browns and blacks.

Footsteps sound behind me. I don't need to look up to identify them; the uneven gait, the heavy thud of a prosthetic can only belong to Peeta.

He lowers himself onto the log beside me, not saying a word.

Together, we make up sadness. Our silence is weighted with unspoken despair, the same lingering chill that has been present for exactly forty-two days.

Our fingertips make contact against the rough bark of the tree. It fell in the storm that night.

His skin is soft and warm. I've missed it, these forty-two days. He's offered comfort, but I could never take it. Nothing could ever warm the cold seeped deep in my bones, so why try?

"It's not your fault, Katniss." His voice shatters the heavy veil of silence. "None of it was ever your fault."

My throat grows thick with a sob that I swore would never return; my eyes swell with tears I swore I'd never let fall.

"It's time to let go."

I close my eyes and go back to that night. The yellow glow of the lanterns, the raging ice outside. The fall of a tree. The absence of a cry.

She was silent, but looked peaceful. I would have thought she was sleeping, if I hadn't known better. I'd seen this before, on house calls with my mother. The ash color of her skin was nowhere close to healthy.

I find my voice, after forty-two days of silence. "I can't."

I had done something wrong. Maybe there was a God; living in district 12 had made that hard to believe, but it must have been true. Some divine being must have hated me. They'd taken everything I'd ever cared about. My father, Rue, Cinna, Finnick, Prim. In a way, they'd taken Gale, too.

All I had left was Peeta, and he'd been taken, too. It could happen again, and I had no doubt that when it did I would finally crack. There would be nothing left of me for him to fix.

I didn't blame my mother anymore. For forty-two days, I've been able to identify with how she must have been feeling. The emptiness that haunts a being, combined with the bitter anger that eats away at the insides. It's hard to deal with, so hard.

He gently takes my hand in his. There's flour under his fingernails, as usual. Peeta deals with things in his way, I avoid them in mine. "You can," he whispers. "I know you can."

The touch of his hand against mine is the warmest I've felt in weeks, but it still isn't enough to bring me back to life.

I haven't cried. Is that weird? Don't mothers normally cry for their children? All I can do is sit and stare, occasionally eating the food Peeta leaves at my bedside, not tasting any of it.

It's too cold to bury her. The ground was too hard, so they had her cremated. Peeta says we'll scatter her ashes in the spring, to give us both closure. He has to know it won't work.

"It's hard," I say, because it is. Saying goodbye is the hardest thing I've ever done, because it always means the person is never coming back. I think of all the goodbyes I've said in my lifetime: my father, who never returned from the mines; Rue, who promised to see me shortly, only never to return; I'd said temporary goodbyes to Cinna, and the Capitol killed him in front of me. Saying goodbye is always permanent, and maybe that's why Peeta and I don't say them.

"I know." There's weight to Peeta's voice, and it occurs to me that he might be as upset as I am. I have been selfish, but can't bring myself to care. "I'm not asking you to forget, but please, Katniss, I'm begging you to live. She never breathed, but that that doesn't mean you should stop."

The tears make themselves known. After forty-two days, I am able to cry.

It's a long shot, I know. It will take time, and it will hurt, there's no trying to deny it. But in the end, it will work. Because Peeta is here, and he's real.

In the woods in a cold, snowy morning, I take the first step towards healing.

**A/N: right, I'm sorry if that sucked. I've never had a miscarriage, I've never really been close to anyone that died, and I'm sorry if I've gotten anything wrong.**

**I'll get back to Arranged shortly. Tuesday? Wednesday? Wednesday for sure, if not Tuesday. **

-Winter'sFangirl


End file.
